Ratted out: Catching up with local musicians, club owners and a DJ or two to talk about what went down for them in ’08
That’ll be quite enough from you, 2008. The collapsing economy, the escalating wars, the rise of Sarah Palin, the virulent spread of Auto-Tune throughout mainstream pop — you nearly killed us. Fortunately, folks in Kansas City had plenty of good music to turn to for comfort. For our year-end wrap-up, we caught up with a few prominent locals to see how they fared in this year of the rat.
Tim Gutschenritter, Riot Room proprietor
Christmas wish: Oasis playing Kansas City
The wrap-up: “We opened in Febuary 2008, and it’s pretty much been super kick-ass ever since. A lot of good people, a lot of good bands, a lot of good vibes here…. The fact that we have opened up our doors to pretty much anybody and everybody, locally and nationally, has created a new subculture here in Kansas City of, like, people who just want to be comfortable and see something cool on a daily basis. I think we have been responsible for the success of the metal and underground hip-hop scenes here in Kansas City. Those shows have been huge. They have been a blast. We are super easygoing, too, and have eclectic minds.”
Mark Lowrey, jazz pianist
Christmas wish: gift certificates to iTunes
The wrap-up: “It’s been really interesting. I’ve had to grow up as a businessperson, as just making my living playing music. You learn really quick that you have to know as much about business as about your instrument. In the last 12 months, I’ve taken more of a bandleader role than in previous years. Maybe that’s the Leo thing actualizing itself.
“The new Phoenix is hip…. They’re going back to a lot of the staples of Kansas City jazz. It really sucked that Bar Natasha had to close — this whole counterculture was displaced. It was a fun place for musicians to hang out.
“I’m learning more and more the rewards of playing at locally owned venues. I do play at corporate restaurants, do corporate parties all the time, and I have positive experiences, but nothing beats places like the Phoenix, Bar Natasha, the Record Bar, Jardine’s, JP Wine Bar…. It’s just a different kind of mentality. The locally owned places seem to care about the music and the bottom line.”
Terry Taylor, Hammerlord bassist and president of Hunt Industries
Christmas wish: more G.I. Joe Street Fighter toys for his collection
The wrap-up: “I think surviving as a promoter in one of the hardest economic years I have had in 20 years in the music biz was a big hill to get over. I know there is still a long road ahead, but I have been staying optimistic. Besides keeping my head above water in this economy, joining Hammerlord is the best thing that happened to me in 2008. It is uplifting to be back playing in a band for the love of the music with no pressure to sign to a label or be the next big thing.
“There were a lot of exciting things that happened in the local music scene this year: Seeing some of the local homies on national TV was awesome — Rob Pope [Spoon] and the Republic Tigers. The opening of the Riot Room has definitely helped fill a void in KC that seemed to be missing. Mac Lethal’s signing and finally getting the national exposure he has always deserved — he has been one of my faves since I moved here five years ago. And Dri, the Lawrence singer-songwriter, put out a CD called Smoke Rings earlier this year, and it was one of the most refreshing CDs I have heard in a long time. If you do not own a physical copy of this CD, go to your local record store — I know Love Garden in Lawrence always has it — and buy it immediately.”
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“Metal” Mark Mathison, DJ (SCSI Bunny)
Christmas wish: world peace
The wrap-up: “Even with our economy being the way it is, people are still going out to shows. With new venues like the Riot Room popping up, they’re getting the metal and rock crowd out again, so that’s healthy. The people who would come out from Overland Park are definitely going to Power & Light. They’re not coming to Westport. Westport is more tightly knit, with service-industry people who are out every night. There’s still been some changes, but that network of Westport is still going strong….
“I got to meet Jordan Knight from New Kids on the Block. He wanted to meet me. It’s a funny story. NKOTB, on this tour, had been feeling like there weren’t many guys coming to their shows. So when they came to town, a friend of mine was doing production work for them, driving them around, and he told them, ‘My friend Metal Mark bought a ticket for your show.’ They were, like, enthralled that some dude named Metal Mark was showing up. So I got a backstage pass and got to meet Jordan….
“I wasn’t really into NKOTB whenever they came out. Someone bought me the Merry, Merry Christmas tape as a joke, and it just kind of grew on me from there. I dated girls in junior high who were into them…. When I met Jordan, I said, ‘You know how many times I’ve finger-banged girls to your music? Thank you, Jordan Knight.’ The tour manager was like, ‘You fucking said finger-banged!’
“All those guys, they’re cool as shit.”
Brandon Phillips, the Architects
Christmas wish: a fishing trip, “warm-water fish in a warm-water place”
The wrap-up: “It’s been an unbelievably harsh year. The good was very good, but the bad was rotten. The economy just sucking is really hammering me, really hammers the band a lot.
“When gas was up around $4 a gallon out west, we happened to be out west on tour. An amazing amount of money gets thrown away on stuff like that. As much as it’s not about the money, that can be a boat anchor around the neck of the band’s morale. It was a hard year — I’m not gonna lie about it. All the stuff around here was really fun. We had some really good shows.
“There’s a lot of great shit that happened for us, but also a lot of really harsh slogging. It was the battle for fuckin’ Monte Cassino. We won. We kicked the Germans’ asses out of there, but it was a very long, protracted, cold, shivering, lots-of-casualties kind of battle.”
Miles Bonny, DJ, jazz musician, producer and Innate Sounds founder
Christmas wish: self-reliance for more people who don’t currently have it; for people to take more initiative rather than waiting for someone else to make things happen
The wrap-up: “Personally, I went to Europe for free and did shows, and that was awesome. I like watching my daughter grow. For me, it’s really been a year of organizing, taking what I’ve done in the past and trying to figure out what I still want to do in the future, and preparing for that without running myself ragged in the process.
“I think, overall, the fact that the Innate Sounds’ Alpha album came out is an important milestone. Aside from that, I really liked the Flying Lotus album; he’s a producer guy from California. Menahan Street Band, which is basically a spinoff of the Dap-Kings and that whole thing — they came out with an album that I definitely would think of as being one of my favorites.
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“A lot of the projects I liked this year were releases of things that hadn’t been released before by old funk bands or new things that were a genuine effort to capture that sound. Part of the reason that I’m scared of DJ’ing right now, in certain situations, is that I just don’t like hardly any of the pop stuff that’s come out. And that didn’t used to be the case…. I’ve gotten the most pleasure from buying old records and listening to them or listening to the old records that I already own that I hadn’t listened to yet.”
Tony Davis, Czar Bar co-owner
Christmas wish: a new computer that doesn’t crash
The wrap-up: “The best thing to happen this year was the bar opening. It’s been a dream for a long time, and it was nice to see it open up after all the work that went into it…. The whole thing has been a roller coaster — in a good way…. We’re looking forward to springtime and the tour season to get strong again. I’m glad gas is cheap again — it makes it easier for bands to tour.
“I’d love for this recession to peak, so things can get back to normal. They always do. It just takes a minute…. And I’m anxious to see what’s going to happen in this neighborhood in the next six to eight months.
“Musicwise, you always hope that one of these bands that is doing really well is going to hit and be a catalyst. It always seems like we’re hanging on the edge. The Republic Tigers — they could do it.”
Suzannah Johannes, singer-songwriter
Christmas wish: an MPC or a sampler
The wrap-up: “It was a good year in a lot of ways. The EP came out, and I got a lot of good feedback about it. I think it was kind of a learning year. I don’t know — I was working and I quit my job, thinking the EP would come out sooner than it did and that I’d get picked up on a tour and be touring. But it came out in October, and I had to get a new job by then. I learned some things about timing. I feel like it was a good year, but it was definitely, like, mostly just a learning session.
“No official plans yet [for the next record]. Even though I haven’t written songs in the past few months, there’s a lot of songs that we play live that haven’t been recorded, so my goal is to get those down. And I want to play in Kansas City more.”
Justin Tricomi, Republic Tigers drummer and co-songwriter
Christmas wish: job stability (same as every musician)
The wrap-up: “I guess the best way to put it as a musician is, like, you spend your whole career as a musician not being a ‘professional musician,’ technically. You don’t go to school for how the business works. Then, if you do end up getting there, oddly enough, you learn that there is really no consistency to the business itself. So I learned that once you get there, it’s still as unstable as it once was. You still aren’t sure where you are going to live next month.
“I think that what happened [with the Tigers], what ultimately got everyone together, was drive and then, secondly, common interest in music. We worked pretty hard thereafter because of that. All of those things put together, plus luck, equaled what happened to us in the past year. Also, the touring aspect of it all, getting the name out there to the public and then learning the nature of the business — what to assume, what not to be able to assume.
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“I can at least see a little bit of motivation for certain people I’ve ran into who feel excitement in the air because of whatever the success [we had] was. We made it realistic and not so untouchable for people to get noticed. It reminds everybody to go ahead and spend those hours at home working with your band.”
As told to Berry Anderson, Jason Harper, Nadia Pflaum and Crystal K. Wiebe
